Facebook "Like" Leads to Sex Offender Bust

[robert01]

I'm on Facebook, but just barely. Somebody point out the hole in my logic when you see it...
This 22-year old girl "liked" the local police station Facebook account. Now at that point, someone with access the police account had to see that flag and then go check out her out. On Facebook, you can't see a person's timeline unless they accept you as a friend. Does anybody set their defualt to "make everythign public"? Is that even possible? I went to Samantha Dillow's Facebooks page. I am allowed to look at a couple of her family (I assume) pictures, but there is nothing there that indicated who her boyfriend is.

How did the police station get from her "Like" to being able to see who her boyfriend is. And then, how the heck did they recognize him as a wanted man? The police Facebook timeline DOES have a listing that they were looking for him the day before (Tuesday the 11th). The pictures of him being brought in are on the 12th.

I smell a rat. This story doesn't ring true unless I'm missing something. Of course, if she was charged and taken into custody yesterday, she may have gotten out and changed her Facebook page.

There is a really good chance they saw her name pop up on the like list and just threw off an email or whatever to Facebook who the complied with the police and sent them the information. Facebook isn't know for privacy and protecting the privacy of its users.

 

[lacktheknack]

This is why I am not on facebook.

I mean its just so ....crazy right now

Why not?

Facebook is an endlessly useful tool for connecting with long-distance friends, keeping in touch with relatives, and putting dangerous criminals in jail.

(Seriously, I've seen more criminals incarcerated thanks to Facebook than I've seen in some crime shows.)

 

[Baresark]

I can agree whole heartedly with the final sentiments of this article. Any government agency will use anything at their disposal to get what they want. This time it was a sex offender, in the future it may be any dissenting opinion about current "regimes".

/endparanoia

...I would like to ask the community to join me in thanking the hard working deputies that brought this fugitive in without incident.

We all know they wanted to shoot the guy. A lot of police officers feel they are part of some sort of military operation and love to be able to shoot people with little no repercussions. Cops in Detroit shoot and kill 4 year old girls sleeping on their grandmothers lap. A sex offender has a big target painted on him. They were probably pretty upset about not shooting.

Fwoo, got that off my chest. Now I feel better. The availability heuristic at work is a fine thing.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

"The innocent have nothing to worry about."

Ah, that age-old statement that is straight forward enough to not invoke worry in the masses but vague enough to be dangerous.

Governments will use anything they have at their disposal to "get the job done" even if it's not exactly called for. Hence why we have police departments with tanks and why half of our government agencies including the Social Security Administration arming themselves to the teeth with rifles and ammunition that are meant to kill and not disable.

 

[Chiave]

Well 'sex offender' in the crazy US law system can mean anything between a totally innocent victim of stupid prudish Christian laws, to a heinous rapist who really should be locked up, so I've no idea how to feel about this.

Except that the lack of protection of suspect rights in the US again shocks me. Just making pictures like that, full names. Who benefits from that? Nobody.

Actually someone does benefit.

5% of the population are being caged like animals after all.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." - Dostoevsky

 

[Roxas1359]

snip

Yeah I know, but companies often time would most likely first check Facebook/Twitter. But that aside I'm not expecting any privacy on the internet at all. I know that anything can pretty much be seen on here.

I wonder if the government is watching right now...

Boy, I sure do trust my government. They are really good. They never invade my privacy and there is nothing for me to worry about.

[sub][sub]I hope they bought it.[/sub][/sub]

So many comparisons to 1984 can be made nowadays it's sad. But in my mind I like to think that they, the government, have better things to do than watch every single forum poster. I don't know, I'm just trying to remain optimistic to hide the paranoia. XD

 

[Frankster]

So just liking a page hands over all personal info you put on your page? Goddamn facebook and goddamn people for making me feel like I need to be on it (i am).

After reading some of the comments here, reckon i'll throw my old computers into lava when i'm done with them, its only way to be sure.

 

[nexus]

Well 'sex offender' in the crazy US law system can mean anything between a totally innocent victim of stupid prudish Christian laws, to a heinous rapist who really should be locked up, so I've no idea how to feel about this.

Except that the lack of protection of suspect rights in the US again shocks me. Just making pictures like that, full names. Who benefits from that? Nobody.

Some people have been entered into the sex offender registry for urinating on the side of the road, drunkenly or not. Others have been put on because their girlfriend was 15 and they were 18, etc. There is a website, I forget the name.. but it tracks a bunch of "absurd cases" like this. There were many involving "just over and under the legal age of consent" type of charges.

What this means is you get placed on the "registry", forever.. for the rest of your life. It's not something you can hide or ever get rid of as far as I know.

They did mention he was a "dangerous sex offender", so he's probably a "real" one I'm assuming.

 

[Nurb]

As evil as facebook is, also selling your personal information to corporations while you don't see a dime, people are fucking themselves over.

This is why "reasonable expectation of privacy" is changing in lawbooks, people don't give a shit. They'll whine and whine, but keep posting photos of themselves that contain GPS data to a site that profits on their willingness to give up privacy.

Stop using it.

Well 'sex offender' in the crazy US law system can mean anything between a totally innocent victim of stupid prudish Christian laws, to a heinous rapist who really should be locked up, so I've no idea how to feel about this.

Except that the lack of protection of suspect rights in the US again shocks me. Just making pictures like that, full names. Who benefits from that? Nobody.

Some people have been entered into the sex offender registry for urinating on the side of the road, drunkenly or not. Others have been put on because their girlfriend was 15 and they were 18, etc. There is a website, I forget the name.. but it tracks a bunch of "absurd cases" like this. There were many involving "just over and under the legal age of consent" type of charges.

What this means is you get placed on the "registry", forever.. for the rest of your life. It's not something you can hide or ever get rid of as far as I know.

They did mention he was a "dangerous sex offender", so he's probably a "real" one I'm assuming.

A lot of the sex offenders on the list are boys 15 years old and under

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2009/09/there-is-fury-and-and-sadness-inside.html

 

[MysticToast]

So just liking a page hands over all personal info you put on your page? Goddamn facebook and goddamn people for making me feel like I need to be on it (i am).

After reading some of the comments here, reckon i'll throw my old computers into lava when i'm done with them, its only way to be sure.

No, it just made the police aware of her facebook page, which it appears has all of her information because she's an idiot.

 

[Pebkio]

So... just to be clear: if I were to "like", say... Homestar Runner on Facebook... am I sending all of my personal information to Mike Chapman?

Or maybe if were to "like" anything causes my personal info sent to the Tazewell County Sheriff's Office and this was just a huge coincidence?

Maybe...
Liking sends all of your info to Tazewell County...
Sharing sends all of your info to El Paso County...
Subscribing sends all of your info to Orange County...

 

[DirgeNovak]

If I read this thing right, ~0.4% of registered sex offenders are 7 years old.
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!

 

[Signa]

If I read this thing right, ~0.4% of registered sex offenders are 7 years old.
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!

My guess they were caught in the women's bathroom.


The fact that they were with their moms doesn't change the fact that they are obviously dirty perverts!

 

[kburns10]

Well that was a bad choice of girlfriends lol

 

[RedDeadFred]

I literally lol'd at this. You have to be pretty stupid to do something like that.

 

[BX3]

Why does a sex offender have a girlfriend...? Unless she was ignorant to his situation, which I doubt, it kinda blows my mind open.

 

[cerebus23]

As evil as facebook is, also selling your personal information to corporations while you don't see a dime, people are fucking themselves over.

This is why "reasonable expectation of privacy" is changing in lawbooks, people don't give a shit. They'll whine and whine, but keep posting photos of themselves that contain GPS data to a site that profits on their willingness to give up privacy.

Stop using it.

Well 'sex offender' in the crazy US law system can mean anything between a totally innocent victim of stupid prudish Christian laws, to a heinous rapist who really should be locked up, so I've no idea how to feel about this.

Except that the lack of protection of suspect rights in the US again shocks me. Just making pictures like that, full names. Who benefits from that? Nobody.

Some people have been entered into the sex offender registry for urinating on the side of the road, drunkenly or not. Others have been put on because their girlfriend was 15 and they were 18, etc. There is a website, I forget the name.. but it tracks a bunch of "absurd cases" like this. There were many involving "just over and under the legal age of consent" type of charges.

What this means is you get placed on the "registry", forever.. for the rest of your life. It's not something you can hide or ever get rid of as far as I know.

They did mention he was a "dangerous sex offender", so he's probably a "real" one I'm assuming.

A lot of the sex offenders on the list are boys 15 years old and under

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2009/09/there-is-fury-and-and-sadness-inside.html

Tell it like it is, people are sheep, spin some disaster, like rampant sex offenders, terrorists, illegal aliens, get plastered all over the news 24/7 then pass a bunch of laws that strip your rights even further.

I recall the big crime violent crime thing where even tho violent crime was drastically down, and everything associated with it, there were news stories all over suddenly about the epidemic of violent crime. And politicians talking about the burning need to get tough.

Same thing they do with guns each time some psycho decided to do something psychotic, suddenly there is an "epidemic" of gun crime from the anti gun left, and people wanting to pass more laws on top of the laws we already got that cover things like guns.

America is completely skrewed either way, we are not free, we have 17 trillion worth of debt, social security and medicare are going to flat ass bankrupt in 30ish years, the mid west aquifer is rapidly running out of water and will be bone dry in about 30 years, and the government and all its agencies are buying massive amount of ammunition.

Meanwhile the EU and russia and china want to move the USA off the international monetary status, which would collapse the federal government overnight because they will not be able to print money to even cover their general spending at that point, cannot happen fast enough as far as i am concerned.

Best thing we can do is to get our children the hell out of the USA and ASAP, change your citizenship. really do not care who wins the next election will only be several billion debt difference either way and our debt is so out of control it hardly matters might as well let the guy that is going to destroy this nation faster win.

 

[JdaS]

Yeah... I just recently found out that due to changes in Facebook's UI, I've been posting everything publicly for a while now. Needless to say, I am not amused...

 

[Strazdas]

If you don't want people to know your personal information, then you probably shouldn't be volunteering that information on a social network. Just sayian.

This.

Also how incompetent police officers must be to be unable to find the girlfriends adress when its even on her facebook.

 

[Valanthe]

... but I feel compelled to point out that this really says something about the state of privacy of Facebook. If you're not careful, you have none, and even if you do take care about what you feed into the system, assuming that you have any sort of built-in protection is just asking for trouble. That's okay if you're a wanted criminal, but for the rest of us, it should be a little disconcerting.

Just Facebook? I thought it was a pretty common rule for the entirety of the internet, wasn't there a huge "Stranger Danger-esque" period about it not that long ago?

Either way, it's been a rule of mine that I never post anything on the internet I don't want the world to know, because privacy on the internet is a cake, and we all know what the cake is.

On topic, "Third Degree Sexual Offence" sounds serious, but is pretty vague about what this guy actually did, would be nice to have a little more detail before I make any judgements on how I feel about the case. I do like the "without incident" part though, police get demonized by everything from popular media to ignorant forum posters far too often, and I can say that if they'd have had to use force, there would be people jumping down those officers throats calling them dumb brutes, or wannabe soldiers, or any number of terribly ignorant insults.